Started in 1997 as part of New York City Department of EnvironmentalProtection's (DEP) enhanced surface water quality monitoring program, the distributionwater quality testing and sampling of New York City's surface water supply systemschanged exclusively to using specially designed fixed sample stations instead of internalconsumer taps, fire hydrants and a small number of fixed sample stations. With such a large amount of sample locations to sample from, it is difficult forfield personnel to remember the exact location of each sample station in a largemetropolis like New York City. When sampling from a compliance site, a sample shouldbe collected from the regular station, which is the middle one in an array of three.Complicated and crowded streets may confuse field personnel and result in an incorrectstation, either the upstream or the downstream, being sampled. To facilitate the sampling operation and to ensure that the correct sample stationsare being sampled, a small portable device can be used to assist field staffs with thefollowing three functions. First, this device must have an identification recognitionfunction. Second, this device has to have the capability to perform logic operation andstore a certain amount of information such as date, time and field test results. Third, thisdevice has to be able to perform a batch operation to transfer the stored information into apersonal computer for follow-up operation. These requirements lead us to consider usinga handheld barcode-scanning device with enough memory for storing customizedprograms and captured water quality field testing results. However, the barcode scanners could notimmediately be used for water quality sampling when received from the vendor withoutconducting a great deal of additional preparation and support work being done. The preparationand support work included developing and implementing:a programming language used to develop customized application programs torun on HHP IIIe scanners;the barcode symbology used to represent the sample site index numbers;barcode label formats for both sample stations and daily assignment sheets;barcode label generating software, label medium material and correspondinglabel printing equipment;database management and interfacing from daily sample schedule to samplebarcode label printing and sample pre-registration; and,dedicated staff to perform the above tasks.Though the preparation and support work appear trivial and tedious, ourexperience showed that they could be the bottleneck which sometimes hinder the entireoperation. Includes table, figures.
